You can start nodes outside of Sybcluser using the RUN<server> files. The first node up will be the co-ordinator.
For sybcluster to run, you need an agent running on the nodes for sybcluster to connect to in order for it to start the server itself.
I have not seen the error you are getting, but make sure you have your passwords correctly defined for the SCC to connect to the agent on each node.
Chris